David Quantick

TV preview: Snodgrass, Sky Arts

This is a different type of comedy for former NME writer David Quantick, who most recently worked regularly as one of the writing team on Harry Hill's TV Burp. It is funny but also strangely touching.

Why our sitcoms will never have it so Good as 1970s

Since the 70s we've had many great shows but they don't have the love - or audiences - that a classic like The Good Life enjoyed.

At last, a less than totally reverential show about 007, the British agent still licensed to kill after half a century of mayhem, as David Quantick brings to light some of James Bond's darker and dafter secrets in The Blagger's Guide. Such as? How many millions of dollars has the Bond franchise earned over the years, how many Shirleys have sung a Bond theme and how many of Bond's on-screen personifiers are partial to wearing a wig (and don't say that last one's easy, with Quantick there's usually a twist to the answer).

One of the longest running comedies on Radio 2 has made its return for the Olympics, as David Quantick presented a guide to the games for people who may not know that much about it...

The Blagger's Guide to the Games is full of information and rapid fire gags, cut in with sound effects and music left, right and centre. This is a four-part series, so it's longer and more informative that The Sinha Games, and covers certain aspects of the games further in depth. For example, there's an entire section about the austerity games in 1948 (when London last held the event), as well as a gymnastics guide.

The main aspect of this programme, for those who haven't listened to previous editions of The Blagger's Guide, is that it's so full of gags and material that often you miss some bits and have to listen to it again. My highlight of the show was a sequence about the austerity games, which featured impressions of Ben Elton, Kenneth Williams and Michael McIntyre all rolling into one. Excellent.

However, in the same section I was less keen on the rationing routine which featured a Dad's Army skit between Lance Corporal Jones and Mrs. Fox after the end of the war. It wasn't so much the lack of humour that was the problem, but my own pedantry. I'm a huge Dad's Army fan, and I know that in the final episode Mrs. Fox becomes Mrs. Jones. But that's just me...

There's much to enjoy from The Blagger's Guide..., though it's one of those shows that needs your full attention.

For the non-sportive, David Quantick returned to Radio 2 to give us his Blagger's Guide to the Games. Finger poised above the effects button and daftness turned up to 11, Quantick initially seemed to be holding back his quick-fire mind to allow slower listeners to keep up. But five minutes in and we were back to his usual rat-a-tat gag-and-fact-packed action. Every aside was a gem ("Even though the war had ended three years ago - that's longer than the Saturdays' chart career - Britain was still full of austerity"). The show even bears another listen, so you can catch great jokes just tossed in, such as when a standup comic flips from Ben Elton to Kenneth Williams to Michael McIntyre mid-rant, with no explanation. Warning: all Blagger's Guides are a little like listening to a over-caffeinated, over-researched man-boy in the grip of quip mania but, as a lot of my conversations are like that, I approve.

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